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Capitalism in space: Elon Musk announced today that the first test launch of a Falcon Heavy rocket next month will carry a Tesla car which will be aimed for a solar orbit about the same distance from the Sun as Mars.

Payload will be my midnight cherry Tesla Roadster playing Space Oddity. Destination is Mars orbit. Will be in deep space for a billion years or so if it doesn’t blow up on ascent.

Musk definitely knows how to generate publicity, even as he lowers expectations for the launch. Richard Branson could learn something from him.

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“Musk first tweeted out the idea on Friday evening, but in an email response to our inquiry confirming the plan, Musk wrote “it’s so real.” After this story was published, Musk told us he “totally made it up.”

To further complicate the story, Musk reportedly told Ars Technica’s Eric Berger that his Tesla-to-Mars plan was “100% real.” ”

I’d be surprised if this just turns out to be a four month premature joke, but we don’t really know. As far as I can tell, the note on The Verge’s article is the only hint that it might be a joke.

Imagine if he does it and a century from now a ship gets into an interplanetary fender-bender.
Wouldn’t be the first time a spacecraft of the future had an unfortunate encounter with a much older land vehicle…

Considering his net worth when he sent up a wheel of cheese to his net worth today, it seems about right. But in reality he’s just preparing in advance for the eventual conflict with an aggressive artificial intelligence (following James T. Kirk’s many fine examples.)

Regarding the strange reports coming from the Verge, it looks like this (2008 Roadster payload for FH demo launch) is for real, and it is unclear what the context of the “totally made it up” message was which lead them to thinking it was all joke.

Phil Plait has some more details, specifically about it being sent not into an orbit around Mars, but “a precessing Earth-Mars elliptical orbit around the sun”.

“Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America’s quest for the moon… Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America’s greatest human triumphs.”
–San Antonio Express-News